


Six Whole Hours

by melforbes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: how many times can i say the word placenta in one fic without it getting weird, life is hard but babies are soft, titles are also hard but babies are also soft, world's dreamiest maternity leave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15368937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: It’s spring, but newly so. In a matter of time, she hopes to show their daughter flowers.





	Six Whole Hours

He brings her breakfast in bed. Beneath her, there are towels deemed old enough to be disposable, bedsheets that they’ve torn holes in. Everything from the scissors to the old mixing bowl to the tub has been sanitized, his doing. The most she’s done - the most she’s willing to do, the most he wants her to do - has been shower and put on gauzy false panties, an adult diaper masquerading as something more youthful. Though she has plenty of towels and cloths all around her, she isn’t clothed otherwise. She keeps their daughter warm with a blanket that dwarfs the girl, something that keeps them both warm. She doesn’t want to put the baby down.

“How are you feeling?” He sets the tray of food on his side of their bed, the unoccupied side.

She doesn’t know how to describe it. She’s bleeding, but the placenta was normal and intact, and there isn’t enough blood to cause concern. She’s exhausted, they all are, and she knows that that won’t change for a long time. Though she’s in pain, she can feel a sort of triumph in it, an elation, for she spent twelve hours - long for a short labor, short for a long one - fully aware of herself and her child, of the man alongside her; it had been a peak experience, a human experience, something that had taken her full attention and had silenced her thinking mind. Even now, she can relish in that delightful quietude, in looking down at her daughter and feeling her world grow so blissfully small. Beyond the big picture windows, she can see mountains, some snow-capped, some lined with the ruins of cabins and flags. It’s spring, but newly so. In a matter of time, she hopes to show their daughter flowers.

She hums a response, and he understands.

It’s past ten; their daughter has been alive for six whole hours. Though Bedelia knows she needs to eat, one look down at the baby makes her arms tighten around the little girl, not ready to hand the baby to him just yet. It had been hard enough to shower, arms achingly empty the whole time. In her short life so far, their daughter has only been set down once, in order for Hannibal to weigh her and measure her for the birth certificate. For the moment, the baby is nameless because they hadn’t wanted to obsess, to be parents who monogrammed preemptively and who prescribed their child a personality even before her birth. Though they’ve both shared ideas, she wants to hold the girl a bit longer, gain a sense of her little tells, feel as if her name comes from her own self rather than her parents’ wants. 

 _Parents._  She has trouble using the word. With _mother,_  she feels an indescribable, almost uncomfortable warmth, an instinctual pride. She hasn’t had a chance to call him a father yet, but she’s imagined it, imagined watching him cuddle their little girl after a nightmare and whispering _you’re a wonderful father_  to him. Though she likes those words, she feels that _parents_  is almost too ascribed, too cultural; the _parents_  are an abstract entity while the mother and father are two people. In this life, she wants them all to maintain their humanity. Here, they have nothing to hide, and she wants that to be firmly established, to be an everyday understanding. She has no desire to return to certain social customs, to be outlaws or outcasts anymore. In this world that they've created together, they will simply be.

He pushes the tray toward her, a simultaneous offering and demand. _This is for you. I love you. Give me the baby._  When she looks down at the girl, at her little face and nose the size of Bedelia’s thumb-nail, Bedelia thinks that maybe she could skip breakfast. At five this morning, she had something, and that could hold her over, couldn't it? In her arms, the baby shifts ever-so-slightly, feeling comfortable and warm, the skin-on-skin almost overwhelming in its perfection. She knows it’s just oxytocin, just a chemical reaction, but it’s so indescribably _good._

He pulls off his shirt, leaves it on his side of the bed. Coming to her side, he reaches down for the baby, and reluctantly, unfortunately, she obliges him; he takes their little girl so carefully into his arms that for a moment Bedelia feels as if she can’t breathe.

Sitting up, she watches him walk toward their bedroom's windows, sit down on a big armchair looking out at the mountains. Though they're not particularly far from town, they're tucked up high enough that they can look down at all of the other houses while looking up at only Austrian nature and the vast expanse of the skyline. The view in the dining room downstairs is better, the windows wrapping around the ornately-carved wooden table and giving a full, unimpeded view of distant chalets, animals in the woods. During her first trimester, when the nausea would dissipate, he would take her out for picnics on their land, feeding her grapes while detailing to her his most recent trip to the butcher's, his ventures into town. Even then, he was preemptively buying their daughter clothes, little hand-knit socks that Bedelia tucked away in an unoccupied bedroom's chest-of-drawers until she was comfortably beyond fourteen weeks. Now, they have a full dresser in what they've called the baby's room but know won't truly be her room for a long time; they folded little pajamas together, took advantage of how intensely Bedelia nested, left the drawers meticulously organized and the room properly arranged. In the past few weeks, while she kept off her feet and prepared for everything as best she could, he kept telling her of a surprise for her, for the baby, and only last week was she able to see it, his vivacious and bright paintings on their daughter's bedroom walls, Venetian canals with softly-sketched animals steering gondolas. Had the work been done for any other child, she would have laughed, but as she looked out at the room, she could already picture their little girl there, pointing up at a panda bear steering a boat, big blue eyes staring up at her father and asking _did you paint this for me?_  Bedelia had to look back on the room once more before bed, her first view of the room having grown blurry with tears.

The breakfast is basic, quick, just what she expected: eggs on homemade brown bread, berries, fresh mint tea. He rubs the back of their daughter's head, mussing up little tufts of hair, smiling down at her with a warmth that makes Bedelia's toes curl. For all of last night, he was so level-headed, someone to ground her and time her contractions, someone to hold her hand when she feared that her labor wasn't progressing. Though they've been to see doctors here, have kept regular check-ups held under false names, she'd wanted to do this with just him alongside her, in a comfortable place and not a German-speaking hospital; she'd wanted him to weigh and measure the baby himself, to preserve the placenta properly, to do what she couldn't. After hours of minimal progress, she began to fear for the worst, finding herself vulnerable and naked in their bathroom's tub, unsure of whether or not her fears merited abandoning her carefully-made plans. Kneeling alongside the tub, he took her hand gingerly, rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, asked silently for whatever cue she wished to give. When she finally felt the head drop, the moment taking her by surprise, he reached out to her, thought something was horrifically wrong, but with the look of relief she gave him, he quieted, knowing that things were starting to look up. When she held her daughter for the first time, Bedelia instinctively reached for him alongside her, brought his palm to the baby's back, wanted him involved and up-close from the very first second. She would never forget the look on his face at that moment, the simultaneous disbelief, overwhelm, and pure love.

He boiled the scissors, cut the cord, tied it off just how they'd been taught in medical school. He managed the mixing bowl for the placenta, a glass of water for her. When he left a cold washcloth over her forehead, the baby beginning to instinctively search for a breast, Bedelia felt the exquisite relief, the overwhelming thankfulness of how this had gone exactly as she'd hoped it would. Once they had together ruled out any need to worry, she was thankful that she could use her own shower to clean up, that he could meanwhile sit on the bathroom floor and hold their daughter against his bare chest, some first moments of bonding. She was thankful that they could all settle in their own bed, their daughter drifting off in Bedelia's arms, Hannibal telling Bedelia to look up and out at the sunrise beyond the mountains. One long night, and though it had been almost unfathomably painful, it had been perfect. She had had exactly the birth she'd wanted.

Bedelia's plates are clean; the baby begins to fuss; he stands slowly, supports the little girl's head almost obsessively, carries her back toward her mother. 

"Do you need anything?" he asks, delicately handing the baby back to her, the transition unpracticed and new but proper. Neither of them is accustomed to letting go of the baby just yet.

The angle is awkward, so she asks, "A pillow?"

Climbing up onto his side of the bed, he proffers his own, gets a word of thanks from her as he adjusts it on her lap. Much better. With her lower arm resting, she finds the latch much easier. Fumbling, the baby takes to her breast, and with a little guidance, Bedelia manages the clumsy latch, everything still new, still a bit painful, still to be learned. She doesn't know of any other instance in which she's been in a collective first time, a sense that everyone around her was trying their best at something they had never experienced before. She isn't expected to be perfect, nor is anyone else around her; all she has to be is present and active, engaged in an educated way, loving. Holding her daughter, trailing her thumb over the baby's tiny, perfect ear, she knows that she can do this, that they can do this together. Here, they've built a paradise where no one can find them, a mountain-view home with perfectly-painted rooms and plenty of natural magic for a proper childhood. They have no one to report to, nowhere else to be. Eventually, she figures, they'll both start practicing again, once their Austrian German is up to par, but for now, they can make an imaginative kingdom of this place, a true home for a true family. Everything they need is right here, and the last thing she is ever going to feel is loneliness. They'll raise their daughter to be whoever she ends up being and love her for exactly who she is. They won't have to worry about anyone ruining their safe haven. They'll be happy, the three of them together, a little perfect family.

He leans gently against her side, rests back on their headboard, lets out a deep breath. 

"Sleep," she offers him, eyes down at the baby. When he hums in reluctance, she adds, "I'll wake you if I need anything."

But she can understand it, the intoxication of this morning, the resistance to nodding off in any way; she wants to be present for it all, just today, just right now. In a week, she'll take sleep whenever she can get it, but for now, she's too enamored with how their daughter is only hours old, how yesterday at this time they didn't know they would be able to hold her less than a day later. For now, Bedelia just wants to cuddle, to have him so warm and grounding alongside her, to stay in bed with the people she loves most. He leans down to kiss the side of her face, the movement sloppy but loving. For now, it'll be the three of them together, lots of skin-on-skin, everyone keeping warm in their hideaway, their world beginning and ending with the little girl in her arms, someone only they know exists. 

When she looks up, she sees beyond the windows that a chartered plane is flying beyond the peaks, a small and personally-owned one, and she marvels at how the pilot will never know just what exists in the home below.


End file.
